Few bands stick around for thirty-five years. Even fewer bands leave a legacy during that
time that marks them as a truly special, once-in-lifetime type band. And no band has done
all that and had as much fun as Leftover Salmon.
Since their earliest days as a forward thinking, progressive bluegrass band who had the
guts to add drums to the mix and who was unafraid to stir in any number of highly
combustible styles into their ever evolving sound, to their role as a pioneer of the modern
jamband scene, to their current status as elder-statesmen of the scene who cast a huge
influential shadow over every festival they play, Leftover Salmon has been a crucial link in
keeping alive the traditional music of the past while at the same time pushing that sound
forward with their own weirdly, unique style.
The band now features a lineup that has been together longer than any other in Salmon
history and is one of the strongest the legendary band has ever assembled. Built around
the core of founding members Drew Emmitt and Vince Herman, the band is now powered
by banjo-wiz Andy Thorn and driven by the steady rhythm section of bassist Greg Garrison,
drummer Alwyn Robinson, and dobro player & keyboardist Jay Starling.
The current lineup is continuing the long, storied history of Salmon which found them first
emerging from the progressive bluegrass world and coming of age as one the original jam
bands, before rising to become architects of what has become known as Jamgrass and
helping to create a landscape where bands schooled in the traditional rules of bluegrass
can break free of those bonds through nontraditional instrumentation and an innate ability
to push songs in new psychedelic directions live.
Salmon is a band who for more than thirty-five years has never stood still; they are
constantly changing, evolving, and inspiring. If someone wanted to understand what
Americana music is they could do no better than to go to a Leftover Salmon show, where
they eQortlessly glide from a bluegrass number born on the front porch, to the down-anddirty
Cajun swamps with a stop on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, to the hallowed halls of
the Ryman in Nashville, before firing one up in the mountains of Colorado.
